


Art/Work

by shaggydogstail



Category: Original Work
Genre: Art Theft, F/F, Magic, Romance, Stories about art
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 17:43:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21360151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaggydogstail/pseuds/shaggydogstail
Summary: A thief. A portrait. A mystery. Some magic, and maybe a little bit of romance too.
Relationships: Art Thief/Woman in a Painting
Comments: 16
Kudos: 28
Collections: Femslash Exchange 2019





	Art/Work

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thimblerig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/gifts).

> Many thanks to my lovely beta, Nacho Diablo!

The police are on their way, alarms blaring, but it’s already too late. Kate’s packed up what she wants, and is far enough down the street to slow her pace to a brisk walk as her breathing returns to normal. _Not getting caught tonight_, she thinks.

She’d always been Kate-in-the-middle. Average sorceress, mediocre artist. Decent at maths, fine at physics. Kate’s OK. Not-so-great-Kate.

But this, _this_ Kate can do well. She’s quick and resourceful, bold but never reckless. She’s got a good eye, always picks up the best stuff, and has enough of a gift of the gab to trade it on. Thieves aren’t supposed to be proud of their trade, but Kate is. She was in and out of Brackenhurst’s window quick as a fox, and she’s pleased with her haul.

Her rucksack jangles as she jogs upstairs and lets herself into her flat. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s comfortable and in a nice area. Quiet for London, not too much crime – apart from the ones Kate commits herself, of course. Tonight she’s brought home a few nick-nacks, tableware, and an apparently functioning enchanted mirror – she puts that face down on the kitchen table. The cursed necklace she’d left behind since it was, obviously, cursed. Kate may not be the best with magic, but she knows when not to mess with it.

‘I see you’ve been misbehaving again,’ says a voice behind her.

Kate turns, only a little surprised. There’s a painting propped by the breadbin, a woman with a flower in her hair and a smirk on her face. She’d heard the picture was a dud, no magic to start with or perhaps none left, but she’d suspected otherwise. There’s something about the woman – the directness of her gaze, her amused expression – that had inspired Kate to hold on to the picture. The execution of the picture is OK, nothing special, Gauguin with a little more realism. There’s no artist’s signature only a name, Oliana, in the corner.

‘I was wondering if you were ever going to speak up,’ says Kate, trying to quell her excitement. ‘Are you Oliana?’

‘I am,’ she confirms. ‘And I’ve kept quiet much of these years. Why bother to speak at all unless there’s someone worth speaking to?’

The stodgy collector Kate had stolen the painting from probably didn’t offer Oliana much in the way of entertainment, the pompous old bore. Kate scoots a little closer to the painting, eager to see the enchantments at work. The brushwork may only have been good, but the spell work is outstanding.

‘What are you staring at?’ asks Oliana.

Kate should really have a good answer about how she’s examining the magic in the painting, or perhaps even assessing the value, but instead she just says, ‘you’re beautiful.’

Oliana smiles and it seems to light up the room.

#

The next day, and the next, Oliana says nothing, though Kate is sure she can feel the weight of her gaze on the back of her neck as she makes tea and files the owner’s stamp off the back of some miniatures. Kate’s a thief, she’s got a good sense for knowing when she’s being watched.

‘Aren’t you going to wish me luck?’ she asks, as she finishes lacing up her boots and picks up her rucksack. She’s got a buyer lined up for some of the trinkets she lifted from Brockenhurst and could do with a little help to get a decent price.

The painting stays resolutely still, and Kate tries not to be too disappointed.

Shame. A working portrait is much more valuable.

#

Kate’s never been one to hang on to merchandise too long – the longer you have stolen goods in your possession, the better chance there is of being caught with them – but she doesn’t feel any hurry to move Oliana’s painting on. She catches herself staring at it, with no real idea of what she’s looking for.

She should sell, that’s what she should do. Even as a non-magical artwork of middling quality the painting would bring in a few quid, and Kate’s not exactly rolling in it. There’s restorers, Kate knows plenty of them, who might be able to fix it up for her, or buy it on the chance they can turn a tasty profit. With a bit of luck and some quick talking she might even be able to spin it as a magical curiosity, only decipherable to discerning sorcerers. Point is, Kate has plenty of options to shift the painting.

She doesn’t sell it.

#

‘You’re watching me, aren’t you?’ says Kate. She suspected it for a while.

Oliana smiles, slow and a little bit smug. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ she asks. ‘You spend long enough staring at me.’

Kate can’t deny it. She looks at the painting every day, sometimes for a few seconds, sometimes the better part of an hour. Oliana rarely moves or speaks, but Kate feels like she sees a little more of her every time. Even when she’s not at home Oliana is on her mind. She finds herself calling into the Gallery of Decorative Sorcery on an almost daily basis, staring at the portraits and even asking them questions when the curators aren’t looking. She never finds anything quite like Oliana though.

‘I want to know you,’ she says.

‘Do you?’ Oliana leans forward in her frame, and Kate can almost feel the swell of magic coming off her. ‘Do you really?’

Magical paintings aren’t always safe. There are terrible tales of unsuspecting admirers being drawn into paintings, trapped for all eternity in the confines of the frame. Kate’s told a few herself, even used one to sell a painting to a young wizard with a taste for danger, and she’s heard plenty more. Some of them are even true. Oliana could be the bait in a trap, or she could be preparing to swallow Kate whole.

Somehow that just makes her more fascinating. Exciting, even. Kate isn’t afraid of a little risk. ‘Yes,’ she says, meeting Oliana’s gaze evenly.

‘Good,’ says Oliana. ‘Tell me about yourself.’ 

Kate laughs, impressed. She supposes she shouldn’t be surprised; Oliana seems as much a watcher as watched, the observer as well as the subject.

‘If you like,’ she agrees. ‘My name is Kate Lavern. I’m a thief, con-artist, and all-round scoundrel.’

Oliana looks positively delighted. ‘Wonderful. I knew you were worth talking to. Tell me more.’

So Kate tells her. She talks about her patchy schooling, and being expelled from The London School of Sorcery. The ex who’d tried to make her carry the can for the fake currency they’d used to buy drinks. Her part time job in an antiques shop, where she’d soon learnt the tricks of selling, and that most of the stock had been acquired by dishonest means.

It’s surprisingly easy to open up to Oliana. By necessity, Kate can’t exactly talk freely about her work, and by nature she prefers to keep herself to herself anyway. Oliana listens intently to Kate’s stories about narrowly escaping guards at the British Museum, accidentally swallowing a ruby she was hiding in her mouth, and gullible buyers who think she looks “exotic” eating up Kate’s obvious fibs about being an exiled Ashanti princess or the granddaughter of a Vodou Priest.

‘You are a good storyteller,’ says Oliana, satisfied. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many rooms full of bores I’ve hung in over the years.’

Kate can well imagine. ‘I don’t know how you put up with it.’

‘I’ve spent a long time asleep.’ Oliana shrugs, but the way she moves is doleful, like she’s resigned to disappointment rather than indifferent.

Suddenly Kate feels angry, and she could kick herself for never having thought about the subjects of enchanted paintings before. She’d never even thought of them as real - _Ceci n'est pas une pipe _and all that – but Oliana is real, and she’s trapped, her reproduction frame nothing more than a gilded prison. It’s so monstrous that Kate can barely speak.

‘Who… who put you in there?’ she sputters.

Oliana tilts her head, and watches Kate steadily. For someone who was painted to be looked at, she’s awfully good at looking out. ‘You’ve got a lot to learn about art.’

‘So tell me!’

‘It doesn’t work like that,’ says Oliana. ‘I don’t work like that. Figure things out for yourself.’

The discussion is plainly over: Oliana sits down on her stool, adjusts the tiare flower in her hair, folds her hands and is still. Her gaze is as piercing as ever, but returning to her set pose must mean she’s gone back to sleep. Kate really will have to unravel her mysterious unaided.

#

The Library of Simple and Magical Arts holds several thousand volumes on the subject of enchanted portraiture, along with hundreds about the art of French Polynesia. Kate is very familiar with the library – you don’t learn what is and isn’t worth thieving without doing your research – but her task is a daunting one nonetheless.

A methodical approach seems best: first, Kate needs to find the artist who painted Oliana’s portrait. She takes a photograph, although she doesn’t need it, and heads to the catalogue section. The catalogues aren’t for public use, but Kate has long had an arrangement with one of the librarians who has a fondness for illicit potions, and knows her way around well enough that no-one questions her cover story anymore.

The post-Impressionist section is huge, but Kate easily discounts most of it for only featuring European subjects. Magical artists are a little more diverse than simple ones, but it still takes less than thirty minutes for Kate to eliminate every half-likely candidate.

What a nuisance. If the artist is uncatalogued, finding out who painted Oliana’s portrait will be much harder. Kate redirects her attention to texts about the theory of magical painting. Skimming is harder here, the books old and text-heavy, full of technicalities. Some even warn outright against the practice of magical portraiture, claiming it absorbs some of the artist’s own magic. It could explain why though many simple artists find success in middle age; magical portraitists are usually very young, or very old. 

Maybe that’s why Oliana is so reluctant to discuss the artist who painted her. It seems so intimate, that she lives with a part of him inside her, carries him with her always. Kate mulls it over as it’s time for the Library to close. She feels strangely jealous of him, this man who got to look at Oliana, captured her in oils, and breathed life, still living, into her. The touch of a paintbrush close as a lover’s caress.

‘Learn anything?’ asks Oliana when Kate arrives home. Her tone is arch, amused that Kate is scurrying around, looking in all the wrong places. Kate dumps a pile of library books on the table with a sigh.

‘Not enough, apparently,’ says Kate. ‘I suppose you still don’t want to tell me?’

Oliana winks at her. ‘You can find whatever you want if you know how to look.’

‘I don’t just want to look,’ says Kate, surprising herself. She wants to touch, to feel the contours of Oliana’s skin and movement of her breath. Wants to submerge herself in paint, to know Oliana in ways she can’t possibly hope to just by _looking_.

‘Really? Looking was always my favourite thing.’ Oliana smiles, but she seems wistful.

Kate can hardly be surprised, not with the way Oliana gazes at her sometimes. And then it hits her, that word, that’s it. _Gaze_. They talk about it in all the books, the artists’ gaze, his view of the world, his subject. But it’s not him this time at all, is it?

‘You’re a self-portrait, aren’t you?’ says Kate. ‘You painted yourself?’

Oliana claps her hands. ‘Over a hundred years I’ve waited for someone to work it out.’

‘That’s amazing,’ says Kate. ‘But, I mean, how?’ Simple artists paint themselves all the time, but she’s never heard of a magical self-portrait before.

‘It wasn’t easy,’ said Oliana. ‘I was sick, and I was determined. The doctors told me there was nothing to be done, to make the most of what little time I had left, but how could I? Knowing there was so much more to see, so many things in the world I could scarcely imagine.

‘I didn’t even know that magical self-portraits weren’t supposed to be possible. I expect that helped. I knew a man who painted grasses that swayed and birds that sang. He taught me spells in exchange for my mother’s jewellery. He wasn’t a great artist though, I learnt that from the sunburnt men who came to reinvent themselves and seduce our children. They painted women like me, and were so wrapped up in their work and their own genius, they never noticed me watching them.

‘After that, I spent months practicing, sketching over and over again. At last I painted my own likeness, well enough that I could live within it. The spells to breathe life into a magical painting are demanding, you know, and they drained every bit of my magic. Maybe something more besides. A week later I watched myself die from a makeshift easel in the corner of my room.’

‘Fucking hell.’ Kate gasps; it’s hardly a sensitive reaction. How is someone meant to react to something like _that?_ She clasps a hand to her mouth, embarrassed, but Oliana laughs.

‘I know you were the one!’ she says, triumphant. ‘All these years watching and finally I’ve found someone _interesting_.’

Kate’s face warms at Oliana describing her as “the one” though she probably didn’t mean it like that. Did she?

‘You will help me, won’t you?’ Oliana’s voice is softer, betraying a rare note of uncertainty. Kate thinks that maybe she isn’t very used to asking for help. Or maybe she isn’t used to being granted it.

‘Of course,’ says Kate, knowing full well it’s foolhardy and not caring a bit. ‘What do you need?’

Oliana directs Kate to remove her portrait from its frame, then has her fetch the brushes and paint she uses sometimes to “touch up” artworks (just the odd little alteration to the signature, doesn’t affect anything but the price). Next, she tells Kate to draw a short line on the edge of the canvas – Oliana reaches for it, and pulls back a paintbrush of her own. Kate lets out a soft gasp when she realises what Oliana is about to do. She’s painting her way out of her own picture.

‘Is it OK for me to watch?’ asks Kate. ‘I don’t mind if you’d rather… if you don’t want…’ It seems intrusive, somehow, to watch Oliana at work, like watching her bathing or getting dressed.

‘OK?’ Oliana turns from her work to look back at Kate. Her face is flushed with excitement, eyes wide and bright. She’s never looked more beautiful. ‘But of course you must watch! Paintings are made to be seen.’

Glad of the permission, and strangely satisfied that Oliana embraces her role as spectator, Kate settles down and makes herself comfortable to watch. Elbows on the table, chin in hands, she pays close attention as Oliana works, fascinated in equal part by the spread of paint and sparks of magic. This, Kate realises, is Oliana in her element, and she is magnificent. Every movement is deft and precise, as she rolls out the background from her painting across the wall.

Even at the speed Oliana works, the task takes a long time. Night draws in then fades away, and Kate’s eyes are red and prickling as the first warm glow of dawn spills through the window. The early morning light casts its own kind of magic, a warm illumination that nurtures Oliana’s picture like spring seedlings.

Finally, slowly, incredibly, Oliana steps out of the canvas and onto the wall. It shouldn’t even be possible but she makes it look easy, like climbing out of a window. Kate tips back her chair as she stands, blinking and awe-struck.

‘Fucking hell,’ is the best she can manage.

‘Right.’ Oliana looks like she can scarcely believe it herself. She raises her arms in turn, examining the now full-sized length of them, and shakes out her hair.

Kate stumbles towards her, awestruck.

‘Can you move?’ asks Kate. ‘Further, I mean. Like… off the wall.’

Seeing Oliana win this piece of freedom convinces her more than ever that she should not be trapped in two dimensions.

‘The final piece of magic,’ says Oliana softly. ‘Just like all the best stories.’

Kate leans forward, one hand pressed against the smooth plaster of the wall. She’s strangely nervous to touch Oliana, but she wants to. She wants it so much. Her heart beats a rapid tattoo as she pulls herself upright, and presses her lips to Oliana’s.

Magic pulls her in at once, and she’s speeding through a swirling vortex of magic. Instead of the flat, chalky surface of her kitchen wall she feels paint, wet and viscous, spreading across her. It’s like a sort of drowning, except she can breathe paint and magic. Not drowning, then, more like being absorbed.

Slowly, Kate becomes aware of the world beyond paint. Hands on her back, warm skin beneath her palms, a damp tongue against her lips. She holds tight, kissing Oliana like her life depends on it, and it very possibly does.

An hour, a week, a few seconds later she steps back, all the better to see Oliana properly. _Large as life and twice as natural_ the saying goes, and it’s never seemed more true. Kate lets out a giddy, half-hysterical gulp of laughter. She fell in love with a painting, then kissed it to life. How is this real?

Now free of Kate’s embrace, Oliana dashes about the room, relishing her freedom to move at will. She takes long, deep, gulps of air, and touches everything – the kettle, the sink, Kate’s battered old jacket hanging off the back of a chair.

‘Can I have one of those?’ she asks, pointing at the half-eaten packet of biscuits on the worktop.

‘Of course,’ says Kate, smiling indulgently as Oliana gobbles down a slightly soft digestive like it’s the finest treat in the world. ‘Feeling a bit peckish after all your hard work?’

‘Hmm,’ says Oliana through a mouthful of crumbs. ‘I haven’t eaten real food in over a hundred years.’

‘Not sure stale biscuits count as real food,’ says Kate. Her mind’s suddenly spinning with all the things she wants to show Oliana, the places they can go. ‘Let me take you to dinner. Or breakfast. Brunch. Let me take you out.’

‘Anywhere, yes, of course!’ Oliana dances back towards her, pressing another quick kiss to Kate’s mouth. ‘You must eat; you’ll need your strength.’

Kate raises an eyebrow. ‘For more kissing?’

‘Always more kissing, of course,’ says Oliana. ‘And other things too. Important things, for the future.’

‘More important than kissing?’

‘Maybe not more important than that,’ concedes Oliana. ‘Lots of kissing. And lunch. And more kissing.’

To prove the point she kisses Kate again, sweet and slow. It doesn’t feel uncanny or magical, already kissing Oliana is as natural as breathing.

‘And then the grand finale,’ says Oliana, her eyes twinkling. ‘I will teach you to paint.’


End file.
